Summary: Eukaryotic-type carbonic anhydrase
Pfam includes annotations and additional family information from a range of different sources. These sources can be accessed via the tabs below.
This is the Wikipedia entry entitled "Carbonic anhydrase". More...
The Wikipedia text that you see displayed here is a download from Wikipedia. This means that the information we display is a copy of the information from the Wikipedia database. The button next to the article title ("Edit Wikipedia article") takes you to the edit page for the article directly within Wikipedia. You should be aware you are not editing our local copy of this information. Any changes that you make to the Wikipedia article will not be displayed here until we next download the article from Wikipedia. We currently download new content on a nightly basis.
Does Pfam agree with the content of the Wikipedia entry ?
Pfam has chosen to link families to Wikipedia articles. In some case we have created or edited these articles but in many other cases we have not made any direct contribution to the content of the article. The Wikipedia community does monitor edits to try to ensure that (a) the quality of article annotation increases, and (b) vandalism is very quickly dealt with. However, we would like to emphasise that Pfam does not curate the Wikipedia entries and we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information on the Wikipedia page.
Editing Wikipedia articles
Before you edit for the first time
Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia. Although anyone can edit or contribute to an article, Wikipedia has some strong editing guidelines and policies, which promote the Wikipedia standard of style and etiquette. Your edits and contributions are more likely to be accepted (and remain) if they are in accordance with this policy.
You should take a few minutes to view the following pages:
How your contribution will be recorded
Anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry. You can do this either as a new user or you can register with Wikipedia and log on. When you click on the "Edit Wikipedia article" button, your browser will direct you to the edit page for this entry in Wikipedia. If you are a registered user and currently logged in, your changes will be recorded under your Wikipedia user name. However, if you are not a registered user or are not logged on, your changes will be logged under your computer's IP address. This has two main implications. Firstly, as a registered Wikipedia user your edits are more likely seen as valuable contribution (although all edits are open to community scrutiny regardless). Secondly, if you edit under an IP address you may be sharing this IP address with other users. If your IP address has previously been blocked (due to being flagged as a source of 'vandalism') your edits will also be blocked. You can find more information on this and creating a user account at Wikipedia.
If you have problems editing a particular page, contact us at firstname.lastname@example.org and we will try to help.
The community annotation is a new facility of the Pfam web site. If you have problems editing or experience problems with these pages please contact us.
Carbonic anhydrase Edit Wikipedia article
Ribbon diagram of human carbonic anhydrase II, with zinc ion visible in the center
|PDB structures||RCSB PDB PDBe PDBsum|
|Gene Ontology||AmiGO / EGO|
|Eukaryotic-type carbonic anhydrase|
The carbonic anhydrases (or carbonate dehydratases) form a family of enzymes that catalyze the rapid interconversion of carbon dioxide and water to bicarbonate and protons (or vice versa), a reversible reaction that occurs relatively slowly in the absence of a catalyst. The active site of most carbonic anhydrases contains a zinc ion; they are therefore classified as metalloenzymes.
One of the functions of the enzyme in animals is to interconvert carbon dioxide and bicarbonate to maintain acid-base balance in blood and other tissues, and to help transport carbon dioxide out of tissues.[not verified in body]
- 1 Reaction
- 2 Mechanism
- 3 Families
- 4 Structure and function
- 5 Cadmium-containing Carbonic Anhydrase
- 6 Industrial applications
- 7 See also
- 8 References
- 9 Further reading
The reaction catalyzed by carbonic anhydrase is:
The reaction rate of carbonic anhydrase is one of the fastest of all enzymes, and its rate is typically limited by the diffusion rate of its substrates. Typical catalytic rates of the different forms of this enzyme ranging between 104 and 106 reactions per second.
The reverse reaction is relatively slow (kinetics in the 15-second range) in the absence of a catalyst. This is why a carbonated drink does not instantly degas when opening the container; however it will rapidly degas in the mouth when it comes in contact with carbonic anhydrase that is contained in saliva.
An anhydrase is defined as an enzyme that catalyzes the removal of a water molecule from a compound, and so it is this "reverse" reaction that gives carbonic anhydrase its name, because it removes a water molecule from carbonic acid.
A zinc prosthetic group in the enzyme is coordinated in three positions by histidine side-chains. The fourth coordination position is occupied by water. This causes polarisation of the hydrogen-oxygen bond, making the oxygen slightly more positive, thereby weakening the bond.
A fourth histidine is placed close to the substrate of water and accepts a proton, in an example of general acid - general base catalysis (see the article "Acid catalysis"). This leaves a hydroxide attached to the zinc.
The active site also contains specificity pocket for carbon dioxide, bringing it close to the hydroxide group. This allows the electron-rich hydroxide to attack the carbon dioxide, forming bicarbonate.
There are at least five distinct CA families (α, β, γ, δ and ε). These families have no significant amino acid sequence similarity and in most cases are thought to be an example of convergent evolution. The α-CAs are found in humans.
- the cytosolic CAs (CA-I, CA-II, CA-III, CA-VII and CA XIII) (CA1, CA2, CA3, CA7, CA13)
- mitochondrial CAs (CA-VA and CA-VB) (CA5A, CA5B)
- secreted CAs (CA-VI) (CA6)
- membrane-associated CAs (CA-IV, CA-IX, CA-XII, CA-XIV and CA-XV) (CA4, CA9, CA12, CA14)
|Isoform||Gene||Molecular mass||Location (cell)||Location (tissue)||Specific activity of human enzymes (except for mouse CA XV) (s−1)||Sensitivity to sulfonamides (acetazolamide in this table) KI (nM)|
|CA-I||CA1||29 kDa||cytosol||red blood cell and GI tract||2.0 × 105||250|
|CA-II||CA2||29 kDa||cytosol||almost ubiquitous||1.4 × 106||12|
|CA-III||CA3||29 kDa||cytosol||8% of soluble protein in Type I muscle||1.3 × 104||240000|
|CA-IV||CA4||35 kDa||extracellular GPI-linked||GI tract, kidney, endothelium||1.1 × 106||74|
|CA-VA||CA5A||34.7 kDa (predicted)||mitochondria||liver||2.9 × 105||63|
|CA-VB||CA5B||36.4 kDa (predicted)||mitochondria||widely distributed||9.5 × 105||54|
|CA-VI||CA6||39-42 kDa||secretory||saliva and milk||3.4 × 105||11|
|CA-VII||CA7||29 kDa||cytosol||widely distributed||9.5 × 105||2.5|
|CA-IX||CA9||54, 58 kDa||cell membrane-associated||normal GI tract, several cancers||1.1 × 106||16|
|CA-XII||CA12||44 kDa||extracellularily located active site||kidney, certain cancers||4.2 × 105||5.7|
|CA-XIII||CA13||29 kDa||cytosol||widely distributed||1.5 × 105||16|
|CA-XIV||CA14||54 kDa||extracellularily located active site||kidney, heart, skeletal muscle, brain||3.1 × 105||41|
|CA-XV||CA15||34-36 kDa||extracellular GPI-linked||kidney, not expressed in human tissues||4.7 × 105||72|
The zeta class of CAs occurs exclusively in bacteria in a few chemolithotrophs and marine cyanobacteria that contain cso-carboxysomes. Recent 3-dimensional analyses suggest that ζ-CA bears some structural resemblance to β-CA, particularly near the metal ion site. Thus, the two forms may be distantly related, even though the underlying amino acid sequence has since diverged considerably.
The eta family of CAs was recently found in organisms of the genus Plasmodium. These are a group of enzymes previously thought to belong to the alpha family of CAs, however it has been demonstrated that η-CAs have unique features, such as their metal ion coordination pattern.
Structure and function
Several forms of carbonic anhydrase occur in nature. In the best-studied α-carbonic anhydrase form present in animals, the zinc ion is coordinated by the imidazole rings of 3 histidine residues, His94, His96, and His119.
The primary function of the enzyme in animals is to interconvert carbon dioxide and bicarbonate to maintain acid-base balance in blood and other tissues, and to help transport carbon dioxide out of tissues.
There are at least 14 different isoforms in mammals. Plants contain a different form called β-carbonic anhydrase, which, from an evolutionary standpoint, is a distinct enzyme, but participates in the same reaction and also uses a zinc ion in its active site. In plants, carbonic anhydrase helps raise the concentration of CO2 within the chloroplast in order to increase the carboxylation rate of the enzyme RuBisCO. This is the reaction that integrates CO2 into organic carbon sugars during photosynthesis, and can use only the CO2 form of carbon, not carbonic acid or bicarbonate.
Cadmium-containing Carbonic Anhydrase
Marine diatoms have been found to express a new form of ζ carbonic anhydrase. T. weissflogii, a species of phytoplankton common to many marine ecosystems, was found to contain carbonic anhyrdase with a cadmium ion in place of zinc. Previously, it had been believed that cadmium was a toxic metal with no biological function whatsoever. However, this species of phytoplankton appears to have adapted to the low levels of zinc in the ocean by using cadmium when there is not enough zinc. Although the concentration of cadmium in sea water is also low (about 1x10−16 molar), there is an environmental advantage to being able to use either metal depending on which is more available at the time. This type of carbonic anhydrase is therefore cambialistic, meaning it can interchange the metal in its active site with other metals (namely, zinc and cadmium).
Similarities To Other Carbonic Anhydrases
The mechanism of cadmium carbonic anhydrase (CDCA) is essentially the same as that of other carbonic anhydrases in its conversion of carbon dioxide and water into bicarbonate and a proton. Additionally, like the other carbonic anhydrases, CDCA makes the reaction go almost as fast as the diffusion rate of its substrates, and it can be inhibited by sulfonamide and sulfamate derivatives.
Differences From Other Carbonic Anhydrases
Unlike most other carbonic anhydrases, the active site metal ion is not bound by three histidine residues and a hydroxide ion. Instead, it is bound by two cysteine residues, one histidine residue, and a hydroxide ion, which is characteristic of β-CA. Due to the fact that cadmium is a soft acid, it will be more tightly bound by soft base ligands. The sulfur atoms on the cysteine residues are soft bases, thus binding the cadmium more tightly than the nitrogen on histidine residues would. CDCA also has a three-dimensional folding structure that is unlike any other carbonic anhydrase, and its amino acid sequence is dissimilar to the other carbonic anhydrases. It is a monomer with three domains, each one identical in amino acid sequence and each one containing an active site with a metal ion.
Another key difference between CDCA and the other carbonic anhydrases is that CDCA has a mechanism for switching out its cadmium ion for a zinc ion in the event that zinc becomes more available to the phytoplankton than cadmium. The active site of CDCA is essentially "gated" by a chain of nine amino acids with glycine residues at positions 1 and 9. Normally, this gate remains closed and the cadmium ion is trapped inside. However, due to the flexibility and position of the glycine residues, this gate can be opened in order to remove the cadmium ion. A zinc ion can then be put in its place and the gate will close behind it. As a borderline acid, zinc will not bind as tightly to the cysteine ligands as cadmium would, but the enzyme will still be active and reasonably efficient. The metal in the active site can be switched between zinc and cadmium depending on which one is more abundant at the time. It is the ability of CDCA to utilize either cadmium or zinc that likely gives T. weissflogii a survival advantage.
Transport of Cadmium
Cadmium is still considered lethal to phytoplankton in high amounts. Studies have shown that T. weissflogii has an initial toxic response to cadmium when exposed to it. The toxicity of the metal is reduced by the transcription and translation of phytochelatin, which are proteins that can bind and transport cadmium. Once bound by phytochelatin, cadmium is no longer toxic, and it can be safely transported to the CDCA enzyme. It's also been shown that the uptake of cadmium via phytochelatin leads to a significant increase in CDCA expression.
Other phytoplankton from different water sources have been tested for the presence of CDCA. It was found that many of them contain proteins that are homologous to the CDCA found in T. weissflogii. This includes species from Great Bay, New Jersey as well as in the Pacific Ocean near the equator. In all species tested, CDCA-like proteins showed high levels of expression even in high concentrations of zinc and in the absence of cadmium. The similarity between these proteins and the CDCA expressed by T. weissflogii varied, but they were always at least 67% similar.
- Badger MR, Price GD (1994). "The role of carbonic anhydrase in photosynthesis". Annu. Rev. Plant Physiol. Plant Mol. Bio. 45: 369–392. doi:10.1146/annurev.pp.45.060194.002101.
- Carbonic acid has a pKa of around 6.36 (the exact value depends on the medium) so at pH 7 a small percentage of the bicarbonate is protonated. See carbonic acid for details concerning the equilibria HCO3- + H+ H2CO3 and H2CO3 CO2 + H2O
- Lindskog S (1997). "Structure and mechanism of carbonic anhydrase". Pharmacol. Ther. 74 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1016/S0163-7258(96)00198-2. PMID 9336012.
- Thatcher BJ, Doherty AE, Orvisky E, Martin BM, Henkin RI (September 1998). "Gustin from human parotid saliva is carbonic anhydrase VI". Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 250 (3): 635–41. doi:10.1006/bbrc.1998.9356. PMID 9784398.
- Breton S (2001). "The cellular physiology of carbonic anhydrases". JOP 2 (4 Suppl): 159–64. PMID 11875253.
- Lovejoy DA, Hewett-Emmett D, Porter CA, Cepoi D, Sheffield A, Vale WW, Tashian RE (1998). "Evolutionarily conserved, "acatalytic" carbonic anhydrase-related protein XI contains a sequence motif present in the neuropeptide sauvagine: the human CA-RP XI gene (CA11) is embedded between the secretor gene cluster and the DBP gene at 19q13.3". Genomics 54 (3): 484–93. doi:10.1006/geno.1998.5585. PMID 9878252.
- Unless else specified: Boron WF (2005). Medical Physiology: A Cellular And Molecular Approaoch. Elsevier/Saunders. ISBN 1-4160-2328-3. Page 638
- Hilvo M, Baranauskiene L, Salzano AM, Scaloni A, Matulis D, Innocenti A, Scozzafava A, Monti SM, Di Fiore A, De Simone G, Lindfors M, Jänis J, Valjakka J, Pastoreková S, Pastorek J, Kulomaa MS, Nordlund HR, Supuran CT, Parkkila S (2008). "Biochemical characterization of CA IX, one of the most active carbonic anhydrase isozymes". J. Biol. Chem. 283 (41): 27799–809. doi:10.1074/jbc.M800938200. PMID 18703501.
- Lehtonen J, Shen B, Vihinen M, Casini A, Scozzafava A, Supuran CT, Parkkila AK, Saarnio J, Kivelä AJ, Waheed A, Sly WS, Parkkila S (2004). "Characterization of CA XIII, a novel member of the carbonic anhydrase isozyme family". J. Biol. Chem. 279 (4): 2719–27. doi:10.1074/jbc.M308984200. PMID 14600151.
- Hilvo M, Tolvanen M, Clark A, Shen B, Shah GN, Waheed A, Halmi P, Hänninen M, Hämäläinen JM, Vihinen M, Sly WS, Parkkila S (2005). "Characterization of CA XV, a new GPI-anchored form of carbonic anhydrase". Biochem. J. 392 (Pt 1): 83–92. doi:10.1042/BJ20051102. PMC 1317667. PMID 16083424.
- Sawaya MR, Cannon GC, Heinhorst S, Tanaka S, Williams EB, Yeates TO, Kerfeld CA (2006). "The structure of beta-carbonic anhydrase from the carboxysomal shell reveals a distinct subclass with one active site for the price of two". J. Biol. Chem. 281 (11): 7546–55. doi:10.1074/jbc.M510464200. PMID 16407248.
- So AK, Espie GS, Williams EB, Shively JM, Heinhorst S, Cannon GC (2004). "A novel evolutionary lineage of carbonic anhydrase (zeta class) is a component of the carboxysome shell". J. Bacteriol. 186 (3): 623–30. doi:10.1128/JB.186.3.623-630.2004. PMC 321498. PMID 14729686.
- Del Prete S, Vullo D, Fisher GM, Andrews KT, Poulsen SA, Capasso C, Supuran CT (Sep 2014). "Discovery of a new family of carbonic anhydrases in the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum--the η-carbonic anhydrases". Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters 24 (18): 4389–96. doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2014.08.015. PMID 25168745.
- Park H, McGinn PJ, More l F (19 May 2008). "Expression of cadmium carbonic anhydrase of diatoms in seawater". Aquatic Microbial Ecology 51: 183–193. doi:10.3354/ame01192.
- Lane TW, Saito MA, George GN, Pickering IJ, Prince RC, Morel FM (May 2005). "Biochemistry: a cadmium enzyme from a marine diatom". Nature 435 (7038): 42. doi:10.1038/435042a. PMID 15875011.
- Bertini I, Gray H, Stiefel E, Valentine J (2007). Biological Inorganic Chemistry: Structure and Reactivity (First ed.). Sausalito, California: University Science Books. ISBN 978-1-891389-43-6.
- Sigel A, Sigel H, Sigel RK (2013). Cadmium from toxicity to essentiality. Dordrecht: Springer. ISBN 978-94-007-5179-8.
- Xu Y, Feng L, Jeffrey PD, Shi Y, Morel FM (Mar 2008). "Structure and metal exchange in the cadmium carbonic anhydrase of marine diatoms". Nature 452 (7183): 56–61. doi:10.1038/nature06636. PMID 18322527.
- Lyall V, Alam RI, Phan DQ, Ereso GL, Phan TH, Malik SA, Montrose MH, Chu S, Heck GL, Feldman GM, DeSimone JA (September 2001). "Decrease in rat taste receptor cell intracellular pH is the proximate stimulus in sour taste transduction". Am. J. Physiol., Cell Physiol. 281 (3): C1005–13. PMID 11502578.
- Goodsell D (2004-01-01). "Carbonic Anhydrase". PDB Molecule of the Month. Protein Data Bank. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
This tab holds the annotation information that is stored in the Pfam database. As we move to using Wikipedia as our main source of annotation, the contents of this tab will be gradually replaced by the Wikipedia tab.
Eukaryotic-type carbonic anhydrase Provide feedback
No Pfam abstract.
External database links
This tab holds annotation information from the InterPro database.
InterPro entry IPR001148
Carbonic anhydrases (CA: EC) are zinc metalloenzymes which catalyse the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate [PUBMED:18336305, PUBMED:10978542]. The alpha-CAs are found predominantly in animals but also in bacteria and green algae. There are at least 15 isoforms found in mammals, which can be subdivided into cytosolic CAs (CA-I, CA-II, CA-III, CA-VII and CA XIII), mitochondrial CAs (CA-VA and CA-VB), secreted CAs (CA-VI), membrane-associated (CA-IV, CA-IX, CA-XII and CA-XIV) and those without CA activity, the CA-related proteins (CA-RP VIII, X and XI).
This entry represents a domain characteristic of alpha class carbonic anhydrases. The dominating secondary structure is a 10-stranded, twisted beta-sheet, which divides the molecules into two halves [PUBMED:9336012]. Alpha-CAs contain a single zinc atom bound to three conserved histidine residues. The catalytically active group is the zinc-bound water which ionizes to a hydroxide group. In the mechanism of catalysis, nucleophilic attack of CO2 by a zinc-bound hydroxide ion is followed by displacement of the resulting zinc-bound bicarbonate ion by water; subsequent deprotonation regenerates the nucleophilic zinc-bound hydroxide ion [PUBMED:8673298, PUBMED:11493685].
Below is a listing of the unique domain organisations or architectures in which this domain is found. More...
The graphic that is shown by default represents the longest sequence with a given architecture. Each row contains the following information:
- the number of sequences which exhibit this architecture
a textual description of the architecture, e.g. Gla, EGF x 2, Trypsin.
This example describes an architecture with one
Gladomain, followed by two consecutive
EGFdomains, and finally a single
- a link to the page in the Pfam site showing information about the sequence that the graphic describes
- the UniProt description of the protein sequence
- the number of residues in the sequence
- the Pfam graphic itself.
Note that you can see the family page for a particular domain by clicking on the graphic. You can also choose to see all sequences which have a given architecture by clicking on the Show link in each row.
Finally, because some families can be found in a very large number of architectures, we load only the first fifty architectures by default. If you want to see more architectures, click the button at the bottom of the page to load the next set.
Loading domain graphics...
We store a range of different sequence alignments for families. As well as the seed alignment from which the family is built, we provide the full alignment, generated by searching the sequence database (reference proteomes) using the family HMM. We also generate alignments using four representative proteomes (RP) sets, the UniProtKB sequence database, the NCBI sequence database, and our metagenomics sequence database. More...
There are various ways to view or download the sequence alignments that we store. We provide several sequence viewers and a plain-text Stockholm-format file for download.
We make a range of alignments for each Pfam-A family:
- the curated alignment from which the HMM for the family is built
- the alignment generated by searching the sequence database using the HMM
- Representative Proteomes (RPs) at 15%, 35%, 55% and 75% co-membership thresholds
- alignment generated by searching the UniProtKB sequence database using the family HMM
- alignment generated by searching the NCBI sequence database using the family HMM
- alignment generated by searching the metagenomics sequence database using the family HMM
You can see the alignments as HTML or in three different sequence viewers:
- a Java applet developed at the University of Dundee. You will need Java installed before running jalview
- an HTML page showing the whole alignment.Please note: full Pfam alignments can be very large. These HTML views are extremely large and often cause problems for browsers. Please use either jalview or the Pfam viewer if you have trouble viewing the HTML version
- an HTML-based representation of the alignment, coloured according to the posterior-probability (PP) values from the HMM. As for the standard HTML view, heatmap alignments can also be very large and slow to render.
You can download (or view in your browser) a text representation of a Pfam alignment in various formats:
You can also change the order in which sequences are listed in the alignment, change how insertions are represented, alter the characters that are used to represent gaps in sequences and, finally, choose whether to download the alignment or to view it in your browser directly.
You may find that large alignments cause problems for the viewers and the reformatting tool, so we also provide all alignments in Stockholm format. You can download either the plain text alignment, or a gzipped version of it.
We make a range of alignments for each Pfam-A family. You can see a description of each above. You can view these alignments in various ways but please note that some types of alignment are never generated while others may not be available for all families, most commonly because the alignments are too large to handle.
1Cannot generate PP/Heatmap alignments for seeds; no PP data available
Key: available, not generated, — not available.
Format an alignment
We make all of our alignments available in Stockholm format. You can download them here as raw, plain text files or as gzip-compressed files.
You can also download a FASTA format file containing the full-length sequences for all sequences in the full alignment.
HMM logos is one way of visualising profile HMMs. Logos provide a quick overview of the properties of an HMM in a graphical form. You can see a more detailed description of HMM logos and find out how you can interpret them here. More...
If you find these logos useful in your own work, please consider citing the following article:
This page displays the phylogenetic tree for this family's seed alignment. We use FastTree to calculate neighbour join trees with a local bootstrap based on 100 resamples (shown next to the tree nodes). FastTree calculates approximately-maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees from our seed alignment.
Note: You can also download the data file for the tree.
Curation and family details
This section shows the detailed information about the Pfam family. You can see the definitions of many of the terms in this section in the glossary and a fuller explanation of the scoring system that we use in the scores section of the help pages.
|Number in seed:||392|
|Number in full:||2998|
|Average length of the domain:||216.70 aa|
|Average identity of full alignment:||27 %|
|Average coverage of the sequence by the domain:||62.88 %|
|HMM build commands:||
build method: hmmbuild -o /dev/null HMM SEED
search method: hmmsearch -Z 11927849 -E 1000 --cpu 4 HMM pfamseq
|Family (HMM) version:||18|
|Download:||download the raw HMM for this family|
Weight segments by...
Change the size of the sunburst
selected sequences to HMM
a FASTA-format file
- 0 sequences
- 0 species
This visualisation provides a simple graphical representation of the distribution of this family across species. You can find the original interactive tree in the More....
This chart is a modified "sunburst" visualisation of the species tree for this family. It shows each node in the tree as a separate arc, arranged radially with the superkingdoms at the centre and the species arrayed around the outermost ring.
How the sunburst is generated
The tree is built by considering the taxonomic lineage of each sequence that has a match to this family. For each node in the resulting tree, we draw an arc in the sunburst. The radius of the arc, its distance from the root node at the centre of the sunburst, shows the taxonomic level ("superkingdom", "kingdom", etc). The length of the arc represents either the number of sequences represented at a given level, or the number of species that are found beneath the node in the tree. The weighting scheme can be changed using the sunburst controls.
In order to reduce the complexity of the representation, we reduce the number of taxonomic levels that we show. We consider only the following eight major taxonomic levels:
Colouring and labels
Segments of the tree are coloured approximately according to their superkingdom. For example, archeal branches are coloured with shades of orange, eukaryotes in shades of purple, etc. The colour assignments are shown under the sunburst controls. Where space allows, the name of the taxonomic level will be written on the arc itself.
As you move your mouse across the sunburst, the current node will be highlighted. In the top section of the controls panel we show a summary of the lineage of the currently highlighed node. If you pause over an arc, a tooltip will be shown, giving the name of the taxonomic level in the title and a summary of the number of sequences and species below that node in the tree.
Anomalies in the taxonomy tree
There are some situations that the sunburst tree cannot easily handle and for which we have work-arounds in place.
Missing taxonomic levels
Some species in the taxonomic tree may not have one or more of the main eight levels that we display. For example, Bos taurus is not assigned an order in the NCBI taxonomic tree. In such cases we mark the omitted level with, for example, "No order", in both the tooltip and the lineage summary.
Unmapped species names
The tree is built by looking at each sequence in the full alignment for the family. We take the name of the species given by UniProt and try to map that to the full taxonomic tree from NCBI. In some cases, the name chosen by UniProt does not map to any node in the NCBI tree, perhaps because the chosen name is listed as a synonym or a misspelling in the NCBI taxonomy.
So that these nodes are not simply omitted from the sunburst tree, we group them together in a separate branch (or segment of the sunburst tree). Since we cannot determine the lineage for these unmapped species, we show all levels between the superkingdom and the species as "uncategorised".
Since we reduce the species tree to only the eight main taxonomic levels, sequences that are mapped to the sub-species level in the tree would not normally be shown. Rather than leave out these species, we map them instead to their parent species. So, for example, for sequences belonging to one of the Vibrio cholerae sub-species in the NCBI taxonomy, we show them instead as belonging to the species Vibrio cholerae.
Too many species/sequences
For large species trees, you may see blank regions in the outer layers of the sunburst. These occur when there are large numbers of arcs to be drawn in a small space. If an arc is less than approximately one pixel wide, it will not be drawn and the space will be left blank. You may still be able to get some information about the species in that region by moving your mouse across the area, but since each arc will be very small, it will be difficult to accurately locate a particular species.
The tree shows the occurrence of this domain across different species. More...
We show the species tree in one of two ways. For smaller trees we try to show an interactive representation, which allows you to select specific nodes in the tree and view them as an alignment or as a set of Pfam domain graphics.
Unfortunately we have found that there are problems viewing the interactive tree when the it becomes larger than a certain limit. Furthermore, we have found that Internet Explorer can become unresponsive when viewing some trees, regardless of their size. We therefore show a text representation of the species tree when the size is above a certain limit or if you are using Internet Explorer to view the site.
If you are using IE you can still load the interactive tree by clicking the "Generate interactive tree" button, but please be aware of the potential problems that the interactive species tree can cause.
For all of the domain matches in a full alignment, we count the number that are found on all sequences in the alignment. This total is shown in the purple box.
We also count the number of unique sequences on which each domain is found, which is shown in green. Note that a domain may appear multiple times on the same sequence, leading to the difference between these two numbers.
Finally, we group sequences from the same organism according to the NCBI code that is assigned by UniProt, allowing us to count the number of distinct sequences on which the domain is found. This value is shown in the pink boxes.
We use the NCBI species tree to group organisms according to their taxonomy and this forms the structure of the displayed tree. Note that in some cases the trees are too large (have too many nodes) to allow us to build an interactive tree, but in most cases you can still view the tree in a plain text, non-interactive representation. Those species which are represented in the seed alignment for this domain are highlighted.
You can use the tree controls to manipulate how the interactive tree is displayed:
- show/hide the summary boxes
- highlight species that are represented in the seed alignment
- expand/collapse the tree or expand it to a given depth
- select a sub-tree or a set of species within the tree and view them graphically or as an alignment
- save a plain text representation of the tree
Please note: for large trees this can take some time. While the tree is loading, you can safely switch away from this tab but if you browse away from the family page entirely, the tree will not be loaded.
There are 3 interactions for this family. More...
We determine these interactions using iPfam, which considers the interactions between residues in three-dimensional protein structures and maps those interactions back to Pfam families. You can find more information about the iPfam algorithm in the journal article that accompanies the website.
For those sequences which have a structure in the Protein DataBank, we use the mapping between UniProt, PDB and Pfam coordinate systems from the PDBe group, to allow us to map Pfam domains onto UniProt sequences and three-dimensional protein structures. The table below shows the structures on which the Carb_anhydrase domain has been found. There are 747 instances of this domain found in the PDB. Note that there may be multiple copies of the domain in a single PDB structure, since many structures contain multiple copies of the same protein seqence.
Loading structure mapping...